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May a change in business model be a sign of a decreased demand in a niche?

by adrianwoodhouse
7 replies
Hello everyone,
my name is Adrian, this is my first thread. Nice to meet you and interact for the first time with the forum, I have been a lurker for too long

Do you think it's feasible that websites that once sold products individually suddenly convert their business model to a subscription based service, because of a demand decline in that particular niche?

I firstly thought it was a coincidence, but then its other main competitor started doing the same (niche is video tutorials on programming languages) and I started wondering if the niche I wanted to target was still viable. I fear that with programmers falling in the crowdsourcing traps set by Google, thus making more and more tutorials for free on Youtube in the hope of earning some crumbs off of Adsense, this niche may be at its last gasp.
Everything I'm passionate about, that I could write about, has a fair amount of searches, but very low competition as the keyword research tool suggests.

So I'm unsure on one side, but eager to start working on my first full-fledged product on the other, should I go for it just for the pleasure and experience?

Maybe in the meanwhile develop a blog to organically redirect readers to the product and following products, monetizing it all in other ways? Embedding an amazon affiliate store within the website?

I was thinking about doing something innovative with the product, solving the kind of issues in the learning process I had had learning how to program, maybe in a creative way but... breaking new ground as a newbie doesn't seem a wise idea to me - at the same time I think I couldn't do anything else better than this. What's your opinion?

Thank you
#business #change #decreased #demand #model #niche #sign
  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Adrian, it doesn't mean a decrease in demand at all, infact it may even mean the opposite. Whoever you're referring to is simply monetizing differently.

    Recurring income, unlike one time sales is much more profitable, stable and dependable.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Originally Posted by adrianwoodhouse View Post

    Everything I'm passionate about, that I could write about, has a fair amount of searches, but very low competition as the keyword research tool suggests.

    So I'm unsure on one side, but eager to start working on my first full-fledged product on the other, should I go for it just for the pleasure and experience?
    Assess the market.

    Don't base your entire business around keyword search volume. BIG mistake.
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    • Profile picture of the author adrianwoodhouse
      Originally Posted by John Romaine View Post

      Assess the market.

      Don't base your entire business around keyword search volume. BIG mistake.
      I know that high volume just signals general interest in something but doesn't guarantee market viability, that's why I was addressing this concern; being the competition low I feared the video programming tutorials niche wouldn't be profitable.

      There is an ongoing trend in android programming, but the target market is known to not buy much. I've seen there are few if none adsense ads on my niche, I am in fact trying to assess the market, I'm buying some time trying to understand better the environment so I don't embark in a time-consuming development processs for a product that won't sell.
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Originally Posted by adrianwoodhouse View Post

    I was thinking about doing something innovative with the product, solving the kind of issues in the learning process I had had learning how to program, maybe in a creative way but... breaking new ground as a newbie doesn't seem a wise idea to me - at the same time I think I couldn't do anything else better than this. What's your opinion?

    Thank you
    Breaking new ground is the exact thing a newbie with valuable experience and insights should be doing.

    Make the distinction - you are a newbie at product creation. You have valuable experience in learning to program.

    Offering solutions to the problems created by other learning systems sounds like a pretty good hook to me.

    If you settled for creating another me-too product, would you be any less a newbie at product creation? No. But you would have a me-too product that would be harder to differentiate from established competitors.
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    • Profile picture of the author adrianwoodhouse
      Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

      Breaking new ground is the exact thing a newbie with valuable experience and insights should be doing.

      Make the distinction - you are a newbie at product creation. You have valuable experience in learning to program.

      Offering solutions to the problems created by other learning systems sounds like a pretty good hook to me.

      If you settled for creating another me-too product, would you be any less a newbie at product creation? No. But you would have a me-too product that would be harder to differentiate from established competitors.
      Whoa, making that distinction really didn't cross my mind, as I was striving for an unfeasible product polish I couldn't have right now. Thank you for your input, now making a more targeted product (and smaller first one) makes a lot more sense than embarking on a big projet I couldn't handle (as it's the first one and I could encounter unforeseen issues).

      Originally Posted by John Romaine View Post

      Adrian, it doesn't mean a decrease in demand at all, infact it may even mean the opposite. Whoever you're referring to is simply monetizing differently.

      Recurring income, unlike one time sales is much more profitable, stable and dependable.
      Thanks for the different perspective on the matter, it's another point for me to analyze. It might actually be a coincidence and the best way at the moment to monetize these kind of products in this niche. I agree that the recurring income business model is better on many levels, but it'll take me some time develop a custom website to handle that. Jumping on this business model wagon but offering a somewhat different product is a really new cool perspective!
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  • Profile picture of the author brutecky
    Originally Posted by adrianwoodhouse View Post

    Do you think it's feasible that websites that once sold products individually suddenly convert their business model to a subscription based service, because of a demand decline in that particular niche?
    I create and sell my own software products so I have some experience in this. I actually think that a company that converts to a monthly subscription is an indication that they are doing well. Its MUCH harder to convince people to buy a product that is a monthly subscription vrs selling them individually for a one time price.

    If a company is willing to change to the business model that is harder to convert that my be an indication that they are doing very well and can take a slightly lower conversion rate.
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    • Profile picture of the author adrianwoodhouse
      Originally Posted by brutecky View Post

      I create and sell my own software products so I have some experience in this. I actually think that a company that converts to a monthly subscription is an indication that they are doing well. Its MUCH harder to convince people to buy a product that is a monthly subscription vrs selling them individually for a one time price.

      If a company is willing to change to the business model that is harder to convert that my be an indication that they are doing very well and can take a slightly lower conversion rate.
      It might be the case; they have produced thousands of tutorials and keep on producing them and it's humanly impossible to study more than two or three in a month, they're giving this "we're giving it all away" impression that's helping them (I even was persuaded into subscribing). I trust your experience as a proof contrary to what I had read about subsctiption websites, that they had high conversion rates when the subscription price was low enough; but maybe the niches are too different? Video tutorials vs software?
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